By JEREMY HARPER 
When I went to sleep Wednesday, Sept. 21, Hurricane Rita was threatening the Texas coast, promising to pester Louisiana with no more than a quick bout of tropical storm conditions. I was prepared to ride out the fringe of the storm in either my apartment on the second floor of a sturdy historic building in downtown Lake Charles, La., a city of 75,000 about 40 miles inland of the Gulf of Mexico, or in the newsroom of the American Press, the city's daily newspaper where I have worked for four years as a reporter.

By MIKE DUNNE

An effort to document the lives of Oklahoma Indians introduced reporter Vicki Monks to a story that begged to be told: how a carbon black plant affected the health of a neighboring Ponca Indian community.

Carbon black, made by the burning of waste oil, is used primarily to strengthen the rubber in tires.